Re-compiling kernel to add hardware for idiots

I've successfully installed Redhat 4.2 on my old 486. At the time it had no ethernet card. Now I want to add a 3com 3c509 ethernet card. I've found various drivers for this card, I've got a file called 3c509.c on my disk at the moment. Apparantly I have to re-compile the kernel (or something!) to get it to work. I couldn't get it to work. I am a total Unix / Linux idiot (I'm pretty good with MSDOS), so please someone give me some idiot instructions on how to do this. Some help on getting a TCP/IP stack working would be nice too.

I've got a bit further, I can run the device driver successfully by typing
insmod /lib/modules/2.0.27/net/3c509.o
and it seems to work
next I though I'd have a go at recompiling, as that's what the Linux site says to do, I've done the following successfully:-
cd /usr/include
rm -rf asm linux scsi
ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/asm-i386 asm
ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/linux linux
ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/scsi scsi

next I did "cd /usr/src/linux"
when I tried to do "make config" I get the error message "make: *** No rule to make target 'config'. Stop."
Now I'm stuck - Help!

Try to run kernelcfg.
1. kernelcfg
2. klick add and chose eth
3. chose eth0 as moduletype and 3c509 as module.
4. tell which io base and irq you have on the card.
(It can be a good idea to do a cat /proc/ioports and cat /proc/pci and cat /proc/interrupts to check for a free IRQ and io adress. And then use the configuration disk and set the right irq and io adress on the card. (Under dos)

Using kernelcfg and netcfg commands under xwindows solved my problems in the end.
kernelcfg added support for my card to the OS
netcfg allowed me to add all the TCP/IP settings
These two programs only work in X
I still don´t know why "make config" doesn´t work, but it doesn´t matter now

I have a directory to /usr/src/linux, it is a symbolic link to a directory called /usr/src/linux-2.0.27
that directory contains a directory called "include" and nothing else
within "include" are "asm" (symbolic link to asm-i386"), "asm-generic", "asm-i386", "linux", "net", and "scsi"
within the /usr/src/linux-2.0.27/include/linux are some .h files and a directory called "modules" containing .ver files

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